Electronic mail (“e-mail”) has become a pervasive method of communication for many computer users worldwide. Because e-mail provides a quick and easy method of communication that was not previously possible, e-mail is now commonly used in the home and in the workplace to send all types of communications ranging from trivial notes to highly sensitive business communications. However, although conventional e-mail systems are fast and convenient, these systems are not suitable for transmitting all types of information.
For instance, the ease with which e-mail messages may be forwarded, saved, and otherwise distributed make conventional e-mail systems inappropriate for highly confidential or proprietary information. Moreover, in conventional e-mail systems the sender of an e-mail message cannot restrict the operations that may be subsequently performed on an e-mail message. Therefore, once an e-mail message has been sent, the message may be subsequently forwarded to other e-mail users, printed, saved, copied, moved, and otherwise replicated. The inability to control the number and type of operations that may be subsequently performed on a sent e-mail message makes conventional e-mail systems unsuitable for sending confidential information for which absolute control of distribution is a necessity.
Conventional e-mail systems may also be inappropriate for sending confidential or proprietary information because these systems do not allow the sender of an e-mail message to control the lifespan of the e-mail message. E-mail messages may, therefore, languish in a recipient's e-mail “in-box” or on an e-mail server computer for months or even years. Some e-mail systems will allow an e-mail recipient to specify that messages should be deleted after a certain amount of time. However, these systems do not allow the sender to specify a time for destruction of the sent e-mail message. Therefore, an e-mail sender cannot be certain that a sent e-mail message containing time sensitive information will ever be deleted.
Therefore, in light of the above-described problems, there is a need for a method, system, and apparatus for providing self-destructing e-mail messages that allows a user to specify a time for the destruction of a sent e-mail message and that will destroy all instances of the e-mail message when the specified time arrives. Moreover, there is a need for a method, system, and apparatus for providing self-destructing e-mail messages that restricts the number and type of operations that may be subsequently performed on a sent e-mail message, thereby restricting the ability of a recipient to replicate the message.